by Darren Dash
They don’t have condoms here, so it’s sex as nature intended. I’m usually wary about unprotected sex, but since they don’t seem to have any kind of venereal disease – Cheryl doesn’t know what that is – I figure it’s OK.
I wonder what Hughie would make of all this if I could return to the other world and tell him about it. Would he say it was a symptom of my fear of commitment, that since I don’t want to be saddled with a paternity suit, I invent a city where women reject sperm, thus making impregnation impossible? For all I know, maybe that’s what it is. If I’m dead in my world, perhaps this city is a construct thrown up by my dying brain to spare me the agonies of conscious nothingness. Maybe this happens to everyone when they die, and each of us creates an afterlife of our own design. That explanation makes as much sense as anything else I can think of.
But whether or not I’m onto something, thoughts of that nature are meaningless. This place is home now, so it’s best not to question its validity. If I ask too many questions, I might undermine its structure and end up back in the void. Safer to buy into the dream and accept things as they are.
I’ve a job. I landed it yesterday. Cheryl earns enough to support us – she’s moved into my room and Franz doesn’t charge extra for two people sharing, so we’ve plenty of drone teeth – but I don’t want to be a dependant. I never have been – even as a teenager I earned my own money, by charging friends to show them how to complete video games – and I don’t intend to start now.
“What can you do?” Cheryl asked when I informed her of my wish to seek gainful employment. I told her about my years in the computer trade – she’s learnt to hear out my stories of the other world without comment, even though she rarely understands what I’m talking about – and when I finished she paused, nodded and said again, “But what can you do?”
It was a problem. Computers aside, I’m not really good at anything. Never did much about the house. Couldn’t even change a plug. Physical work wasn’t for me.
“How about your place?” I asked. “Melting drones down can’t be too difficult. What sort of qualifications would I need?”
“None,” she said. “I’ll put your name down for a position if you like. You’ll get in eventually but you’ll have to wait. There’s a long line of candidates ahead of you. A couple of hundred people queue up by the admissions desk every day. Their places in the line are reserved.”
We spent most of the night discussing it before Cheryl hit on a solution. “I know!” she cried. “We’ll use that crazy imagination of yours and get you a job as a yarn spinner.”
I’d seen those in nourishment houses when I went on dates with Cheryl. Since there are no televisions or radios, no music or major organised games, people rely on storytellers for entertainment when the sun goes down. The nourishment houses are full of them, men and women spinning tall tales, mostly about giant drones which come to life and eat people — the drones are vital even to fictional flights of fancy in this place.
“A yarn spinner? Me?” I laughed. “Don’t be silly. I’ve never made up a story in my life. I was always useless at that kind of stuff, even in school.”
“Nonsense,” Cheryl gushed. “You make up the most wonder-ful stories I’ve ever heard. Things like glass, electrocity…”
“Electricity,” I corrected her.
“…computers, planes and all the rest,” she continued. “They’re amazing tales. People will pay lots of teeth for stories like those.”
I remained unconvinced but went with her to see Kipp the following evening. People were already eating when we arrived but it wasn’t too busy, so Kipp was happy to chat. The nourishment house manager listened to Cheryl singing my praises, adjusting his cufflinks while he thought about whether or not to give me a chance.
“He does have a unique slant on life,” Kipp agreed, “but can he translate it into captivating stories in front of an audience? A window filled with a panel of see-through, melted sand is an interesting idea, but something has to be happening in a story – somebody must be thrown through the window, or a killer drone has to be glimpsed through it – to grip people’s attention and draw them in.”
“He’s right,” I told Cheryl. “I couldn’t do stuff like that. I’d come off sounding like a dull tourist guide. It’d be boring. People would tune out.”
To be honest, I was terrified by Cheryl’s proposal. I’d never dreamt of being a performer. I’ve always thought there was something freakish about people who put themselves on public display, forsaking the safety of obscurity for the bright lights of fickle fame. But Cheryl wouldn’t listen. She was convinced of my talent.
“Give him a trial run,” she pleaded with Kipp. “Put him on now –”
“Now?” I squeaked.
“– and he’ll do a show for free. If things work out, we’ll discuss terms later. If he flops, just drag him off and we’ll pay for a meal, no hard feelings.”
“OK,” Kipp said reluctantly, “but if I sense he’s losing the audience, I’ll cut him short immediately.”
“Thanks,” Cheryl said. “You won’t regret this.”
“I can’t go on now,” I whined. “I’ll have to prepare and compose my thoughts.”
“Good luck, Newman,” Cheryl said and gave me a quick peck on the cheek before ignoring my protests and pushing me into the spotlight. Well, not an actual spotlight — it was a raised, circular dais in the middle of the room, surrounded by thick candles. There was a light smattering of applause, then the house went silent. Deathly still.
“Hi,” I mumbled, smiling stiffly. “My name’s Newman Riplan. Um. Have you heard the one about the Irishwoman, the Scotswoman, the Welshwoman and the German Shepherd?”
Blank faces. I decided to scrap the joke and started talking about my job. I told them I was a troubleshooter who worked with computers, and began to describe what computers were and how they operated. I could sense people losing interest and saw Kipp edging closer to the stage. I was relieved at the thought of getting out of it so easily and pressed on with the technical jargon. Then a man in the audience raised his hand. Kipp had been about to haul me off but paused, not wanting to get in the way of a customer’s question.
“Um, yes?” I smiled, confused.
“Excuse me,” the man said, “but do these computers have something to do with drones? The way you talk about them, they sound alike — alive but not intelligent, able to be used but incapable of working by themselves, and you said they bite.”
“No,” I grinned, “I said bytes. That’s…”
I stopped. Ears had perked up and suddenly I saw a way to hold the audience. Taking a deep breath, I set my eyes on the man – I found it was easier if I was speaking to a single person – and said, “Yes. Computers are machines that drones use.”
Excited murmurs rippled round the nourishment house and Kipp took a few steps back.
“What are they for?” another man asked.
I sought him out, smiled when I spotted him, then adopted my solemnest voice. “Computers are machines which drones have built. Not ordinary drones, but clever ones. A gang of genius drones –” Genius drones were regular villains in many of the tales I’d heard. “– have built these machines called computers, designed to stimulate brain activity in the other drones, so that they can rise as a massive group and take over the city.”
The audience members gasped and muttered loudly to one another, then leant forward raptly. I glanced around – Kipp had withdrawn to take orders, while Cheryl was sitting in a corner, proudly smiling at me – then raised my voice and spun a yarn which was a rip-off of War of the Worlds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
And the crowd loved it.
Cue my new career.
I’m not on much of a salary – five drone teeth a night – but that will improve if I continue pulling in the crowds. My first two gigs have gone down a treat, but Kipp wants to be sure I can keep it up. Successful yarn spinners have to be able to deliver more than one basic type of story, a
s people get bored of the same old tale, even in this city of fractured memory. I don’t think that’ll be a problem. When I run out of computer stories, I can recycle some standard Earth ones and claim they’re my own. Nobody here has heard of the Brothers Grimm, Shakespeare or Stephen King. Nobody’s seen a movie or a TV show. I can take the plots and characters from the shows and movies I’ve watched, the books and comics that I’ve read, twist them round so people in this city can understand them, et voilà! an endless supply of material, meaning drone teeth galore.
“Plagiarism?” you say. Sorry, in this city without a name, I don’t know what that means.
Speaking of names… I asked Kipp last night why everybody has only one name. I thought it might be significant. He just shrugged and said, “Who needs two?”
Vin – the public car driver – was with him. “I know a few people with two names,” Vin said. “Most took the second one so they could stand out. Snobs.”
“But nobody’s born with two?” I asked, then shook my head when they looked blank. “Sorry, I forgot, nobody gets born here, right?”
I asked what happened if two people had the same name but neither Vin nor Kipp had ever heard of that happening. The very idea puzzled them.
“Two people with the same name?” Vin asked. “How could that be? I wouldn’t know which was which if somebody got in my car and asked for one of them.”
“Society couldn’t function under such conditions,” Kipp agreed, “but it’s a great idea for a horror story. Are you going to use it tonight, Newman? You could say computers were making people forget their proper names, giving them other people’s, creating chaos so that the drones could revolt.”
“Yeah,” I said, “maybe.”
“Two people with the same name,” Vin said again and shivered. “Creepy.”
I slip into a suit that I bought earlier today. The selection isn’t great in the city stores, and the material is rougher than what I’m used to – it’s made from recycled drone flesh, though I try not to think about that – but I look pretty good in the new gear. Better than I’ve been looking anyway — my old suit was fit for little more than the bin.
Cheryl is naked and washing her armpits. (No deodorant, which was a big turn-off at first, but my nose has adjusted.) We recently got done making love. I feel like sneaking up behind her, wrapping my arms around her and squeezing tight, but I might get the suit wet and I don’t want to risk damp patches this close to the show. Cheryl turns off the tap, dries her arms and catches me watching. “What are you looking at?” she asks, treating me to a full-frontal view.
“Nothing,” I say bashfully.
She gazes down at her breasts. “If you think these are nothing, there’s something wrong with you,” she chuckles and gets into her dress. “What’s the story going to be about tonight?” she asks as we go around extinguishing candles.
“It’s a good one,” I tell her. “I call it Dracula. It’s about this drone with sharp teeth who sucks the blood out of humans.” I pause by the last lit candle. One final glimpse round the room, then I wink at her – “I think you’re going to like it. It packs a lot of bite.” – and blow out the candle.
ELEVEN
I’ve been gigging – God, I sound like a roadie – for the better part of twenty nights now, straight through, no breaks. They don’t have weekends in this city — hell, they don’t even have weekdays. It’s not tiring work, standing before an appreciative audience for a couple of hours every night, reliving old TV shows and movies and vaguely remembered comics and books, but I feel I’m due a rest. After all, that’s what I flew out of Amsterdam for, a vacation, a chance to unwind.
I ask Cheryl how you go about booking time off.
“Ask for it,” is her simple answer.
“That’s all?”
“Sure,” she says. “Nobody’s expected to work constantly. Take tonight off if you’re tired. Pop into Kipp’s and tell him, so he has time to find a stand-in.”
“You don’t think he’ll mind?”
“Of course not. He won’t pay you for tonight, obviously, but he won’t begrudge you the break. Employers are people just like us. He wants you fresh and in the mood, not drained and unenthusiastic.”
According to Cheryl, that’s how holidays function here. You take time off when you feel like it, as much as you want. It sounds like a crazy system but it works because people don’t abuse it. Workers only take time off when there’s a valid reason. Employers trust them and they repay that trust. The world I hailed from could have learnt a thing or two from these people.
Kipp’s disappointed I won’t be appearing – I’ve become his biggest draw and his nourishment house is packed every night when it’s my turn to take the stage – but he doesn’t complain. “Will you be back tomorrow?” he asks.
“Sure,” I promise. “I only want a night off to recharge my batteries.”
“Ah,” he smiles, “batteries. Those are the weapons drones use to drain the energy out of humans, yes?”
“Got it in one,” I grin.
Cheryl comes home early. She’s taken the afternoon off and won’t be going in tomorrow either, so we can stay up late and party through until the early hours of the morning.
We start with a pleasant bout of lovemaking, then wash ourselves using water in the sink – no baths or showers here, which I’m still struggling to accept – and get dressed. Cheryl takes my arm and we waltz downstairs like a couple of toffs on our way to the Proms. Franz spots us as we pass through the lobby and smiles. “Going out,” he notes.
“Your powers of insight never fail to amaze,” I smirk.
“Anywhere special?” he asks.
“Not really,” Cheryl says. “We’ll see where the night takes us.” That’s one of my phrases which she’s adopted.
“Go with the flow,” I say.
“Ride with the tide,” Cheryl smiles. “Ruck with the ducks. Face the flood in the mud. Let loose in the juice.”
Franz laughs and shakes his head. “You get crazier every day,” he compliments us. “Enjoy yourselves.”
“We’ll be late back,” I tell him. “If the enemaists miss us, ask them to send a day crew round in the morning.”
“Will do,” Franz says and out we glide.
It’s a lovely evening, warm but not sticky, a gentle breeze, a full moon rising in the distance, a nice complement of stars twinkling in the darkening sky. If I knew anything about astrology I might be able to work out if the sky has any similarities to the one that hangs above the earth, but I’m clueless about such matters. I could never even find the North Star. Besides, what good would it do if I knew? This city’s timeless and spaceless. To thrive here, I must be too.
We hail a public car, drive blindly for half an hour, and have the driver drop us off somewhere beyond our regular stomping ground. We stroll idly for a time, whispering to each other, watching the moon and stars come into their own. The streets empty as people lock themselves in for the night. Night owls will ooze out of their dens later, to while away the dark hours in nocturnal nourishment houses, but for the time being we’re pretty much the only beaters of these deserted paths, apart from the candle lighters, enemaists and garbage collectors.
We visit a couple of nourishment houses, where we drink sap and nibble on a selection of crisp fingers and toes. I don’t feel as easy devouring the mannequins as Cheryl and everyone else does but I’m getting used to it. I sucked direct from a drone’s head a few nights ago, and although I felt queasy, I managed to keep my dinner down.
After another stroll we find a busy nourishment house and tuck into a lavish meal. A comedian prattles away behind us while we eat. Most of his jokes are feeble, drone-related puns – “Why did the drone cross the road when it was busy and get killed? Because I told it to.” “How many drones can you fit in a car? Fifty if you melt them down.” “How do you confuse a drone? Shake a bag of teeth at it and ask if any look familiar.” – but the people in the audience lap them up and howl with
laughter. I pretend to chuckle but I’ve heard better in schoolyards.
We pay for the meal, stay seated until the comedian finishes his act, then re-emerge into the night.
“You didn’t like the funny man, did you?” Cheryl asks as we trail along beneath the serene white moon.
“He was OK,” I lie.
“Be honest,” she says.
“Alright,” I confess, “I didn’t like him.”
“Everybody else did,” she comments. “Why didn’t you?”
I snort. “Because he wasn’t funny. He told dumb jokes that made fun of drones. Any fool could do that. Like, why did the drone cross the road? Because it was tied to the ostrich.”
“What’s an ostrich?” Cheryl asks.
“A big bird with a long neck.”
“Bird?” she queries, which makes me realise I haven’t seen any birds during my time here, so maybe they don’t have them in the city.
“It’s a creature that can fly,” I explain. “I mean, birds in general can fly, but ostriches can’t, because they’re too big.”
She nods thoughtfully, considers my impromptu joke, then bursts out laughing. “Because it was tied to the ostrich!” she howls, doubling over. “That’s brilliant. Can I tell that one to Kipp and Franz and pretend it’s mine?”
“Sure,” I say, bemused.
“Do you know any more?” she asks.
I think back to my childhood and the silly jokes my friends and I would swap. “What do you call a thin drone with a finger up its nose? Slim Pickens.” And then, of course, I have to try and explain who Slim Pickens is, which is difficult, since I’ve only the vaguest notion myself. But Cheryl laughs dutifully, even though she doesn’t get it. Like everybody else, she’s tickled pink by any joke that points the cruel finger of satire at the poor old harmless drones.
